Saturday, September 17, 2011

I'm not at all happy with my last kiln load of pottery, the glaze I used blistered, cratered and pin holed on almost every single piece. I used a commercial glaze, "Sea Spray", it's an Opulence glaze put out by Mid-South Ceramics. Out of the 3 glazes I have by them this was the only one acting correctly when fired. I was having trouble with their "Blue Moon" glaze running off the pots and all over my kiln shelves so I emailed them to ask for help and if I could add something to it to make it more stable, they never responded... shame on them. I know the problem didn't stem from my bisque firing because I had pieces with the same clay, same bisque firing same shelf with the glaze I mixed and those pieces were beautiful with no problems, only the Opulence glaze had problems. This will put an end to my using commercially made glazes forever. It's heart breaking to put so much time and effort into something and have it get ruined because of something stupid.
I had the pottery spread out on top of my 2 kilns and 2 tables so I could be pissed off about if for a few days. Then when I had enough I broke all of it, piece by piece, it made me feel a bit better in a way I guess. On some of these I used Sea Spray with the rim dipped in their antique iron glaze. The same problems occurred on the pieces glazed only with sea spray and that where rim dipped in antique iron. It's all crap!